Trump walks back on immigration change

Posted: 8:04 pm Thursday, August 25th, 2016

By Jamie Dupree

A day after he left open the chance of legal status for millions of immigrants in the United States illegally, Donald Trump tried to close the door on that, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he does not support any immediate move to a legal status for law abiding immigrants.

“When they come back in, then they can start paying taxes, but there is no path to legalization unless they leave the country and then come back,” Trump said of those in the U.S. illegally.

That type of procedure is what some would call, “touchback amnesty” – where the immigrant would return to their home country for an undetermined time, and then come back to the United States – legally.

Trump has always left “touchback amnesty” open as a possibility, even though he also called for the deportation of all immigrants who were illegally in the U.S., something that Ted Cruz repeatedly tried to highlight during the GOP primaries.

So far this week, Trump has praised how President Obama handled some immigration enforcement actions, opened the door to allowing millions to stay on in the U.S., and now seemingly closed that door to return to his original position that involved ‘touchback amnesty.’

Trump is supposed to talk immigration next week during a visit to Phoenix, as he promised on Thursday to set out more definitively what he wants to do on the politically charged issue.